Payments for Siding Contractors: What Stripe, Square, and the Big Processors Actually Cost You

The short version: siding lives on deposits that lock the schedule and milestone payments against material lead times — and flat-rate processors punish both. A $14,000 fiber-cement job on Square's flat rate costs you over $400 in fees; the same job on interchange-plus costs around $300; by ACH it's $5. Nobody at Stripe or Square will ever write the siding version of this page. Here's the math at your ticket sizes, with published rates checked October 2026. Also see Siding, AI for Siding Contractors, and Tech for Siding Companies.

The fee table: what each processor actually charges you

Published rates, checked October 2026. Square: 2.6%+$0.15 in-person, 2.9%+$0.30 online, 3.5%+$0.15 keyed/stored. Stripe: 2.7%+$0.05 in-person, 2.9%+$0.30 online, 3.4%+$0.30 stored. Interchange-plus (typical ISO contractor pricing): ~0.3% markup over interchange.

$600 storm-damage repair (reader on-site): Square $15.75 · Stripe $16.25 · Interchange-plus ~$12.90

$2,800 partial re-side (invoice link): Square $81.50 · Stripe $81.50 · Interchange-plus ~$61.60

$14,000 full house, fiber cement (online): Square $406.30 · Stripe $406.30 · Interchange-plus ~$308 · ACH (0.8%, capped at $5) $5.00

$22,000 bundled siding + roofing (online): Square $638.30 · Stripe $638.30 · Interchange-plus ~$484 · ACH $5.00

$14,000 job (deposit keyed in because the reader died): Square $490.15 · Stripe $476.30 · Interchange-plus ~$364

$406 versus $5 — same $14,000 house. At volume: 80 full-house jobs a year at $13,500 = $1.08 million. Square/Stripe online: ~$31,356/year. Interchange-plus: ~$23,760/year. Difference: ~$7,600/year — the material cost of a whole house. Every processor here moves money over the same card rails — Finix builds that underlying infrastructure; the numbers above are what the brands charge to ride it.

The hidden row: the color-selection deposit. Take $2,000 down to lock the order and the install slot — Square online takes $58.30 of it. That deposit exists to protect your schedule; the fee eats the protection. Price the deposit to cover it, or push it to ACH.

The workflow checklist the big processors fail

• Deposits that lock the schedule. A $7,000 deposit on a $14,000 job is the transaction — and on a new Square account it's the outlier that triggers a hold. Underwritten merchant accounts price the ticket size in advance.
• Milestone billing against lead times. Deposit at order, payment at material arrival, balance at final walkthrough. Each milestone needs its own payment link and its own reminder — not one invoice and hope.
• Bundled billing. Siding + roofing + gutters on one contract, but the draws hit at different times. You need line-item invoicing that splits cleanly, because the homeowner's question is always "what am I paying for right now?"
• Text-to-pay at the walkthrough. Final payment collected at the finished wall, not "next week." The walkthrough is the highest-converting payment moment in the business — miss it and the invoice ages 30 days.
• ACH for the big balances. $11,000 balance: $5 by ACH, $319 by card. Say it at contract signing.
• Surcharging where legal. Most states allow it with disclosure; Connecticut and Massachusetts restrict it. On $14,000 tickets, a compliant surcharge program dwarfs rate shopping.
• Card-on-file at selection. Take the card when the homeowner picks the color — charge the deposit when the order goes to the supplier. Stored-card rates run higher (Stripe 3.4%+$0.30); build it into the deposit math.

Square's generic pages cover text-to-pay. Nobody's generic page covers the rest, because the rest is siding.

The honest verdict on each processor

Square: acceptable for repair tickets and the walkthrough card swipe. Wrong for full-house jobs — the flat rate is a $100+ tax per house, and big deposits on new accounts invite holds. If your average ticket is over $5,000, Square is a repair tool wearing a replacement costume.

Stripe: powerful API, zero siding workflow out of the box. Milestone billing, bundled line items, lead-time-triggered reminders — all custom builds. Fine if you're already a software company that happens to install siding; otherwise you're paying developer rates to reinvent invoicing.

Adyen: excellent interchange-plus economics at scale, but enterprise-shaped. A siding company doing $3M a year is below their attention line.

Chase Payment Solutions, Fiserv, Global Payments/Worldpay: quote-based and bank-led. Their interchange-plus pricing fits high-ticket siding well — but you'll explain milestone billing to the salesperson, because they've never heard of a fiber-cement lead time.

The takeaway for most siding shops: interchange-plus merchant account underwritten for $10k+ tickets, ACH as the default for balances over $5,000, and a card reader kept for repairs and walkthroughs. The processor that can't do all three isn't a siding processor.

How a siding company actually wires this up: notes from Finix's public docs

ClaroPro covers voice-to-invoice — the repair gets dictated at the truck and billed by text. The money movement underneath is where Finix's public docs (docs.finix.com) get specific. What to look for:

• Payment links per milestone. Docs cover generating separate collectible links for deposit, material-arrival, and final walkthrough — so the $14,000 job becomes three clean asks instead of one awkward one.
• Fee profiles (interchange-plus). Their documentation shows per-merchant pricing structures — the mechanism behind the "$406 vs $5" table above.
• ACH for balances. Bank-transfer guides with the 0.8%-capped-at-$5 math — the $11,000 balance your homeowner would rather not put on a card.
• Stored cards for selection deposits. Tokenization docs cover taking the card at color selection and charging it when the supplier order goes in — with the higher stored-card rates visible up front instead of as a statement surprise.
• Webhooks for lead-time events. Payment events that fire when the deposit lands, so the order goes to the supplier automatically instead of waiting for the office to notice the money arrived.

Architecture, not brand: underwritten deposits, milestone links, ACH on balances, money events driving the job forward. That's a siding payments setup.

FAQ

What does processing cost on a $14,000 siding job? Square/Stripe online: ~$406. Interchange-plus: ~$308. ACH: $5. Rates checked October 2026.

Should I surcharge the card fee? In most states, yes with proper disclosure — Connecticut and Massachusetts restrict it. On $14,000 tickets the compliant surcharge is worth more than any rate negotiation. Put it in the contract, not on the invoice as a surprise.

How do I take a $7,000 deposit safely? On an underwritten merchant account sized for your tickets — not a new aggregated account. Split deposit/material/balance into separate transactions and take the card at selection time.

Card or ACH for the final walkthrough? Offer both, default the conversation to ACH for anything over $5,000: "most customers pay the balance by bank transfer and skip the fee." Keep the reader ready — some homeowners just want the card points.

This month: get underwritten for your real ticket sizes, move balances over $5,000 to ACH by default, and put the surcharge disclosure in the contract template. Then read Tech for Siding Companies — the system that tracks selections and lead times is what makes the milestone billing possible.